Beyond Supplements: The Science of Flavonoids and Whole-Body Health

Founder and President, The Beljanski Foundation

Natural Health Products Executive
- Flavonoids are protective plant compounds found in colorful foods
Brian explains that flavonoids are naturally occurring compounds found in fruits, vegetables, herbs, teas, and other plants. He highlights colorful foods such as berries, pomegranate, green tea, chamomile, parsley, rosemary, and oregano as examples of flavonoid-rich plants. - Diet quality and supplementation can both support wellness
The conversation emphasizes the importance of eating a diverse range of whole foods, especially colorful fruits and vegetables. Brian and Sylvie discuss how modern diets, processed foods, and declining soil quality may make it more difficult for some people to obtain sufficient plant nutrients through food alone. - Natural health products should complement informed healthcare decisions
Brian discusses plant-based formulations designed to support immune health, brain health, and inflammation balance. The episode emphasizes that supplements should be viewed as part of a broader wellness strategy that includes nutrition, lifestyle, professional guidance, and conventional medical care when appropriate.
Full Transcript
Show Introduction and Guest Background 0:00
Welcome to the Belgiansky Cancer Talk Show where integrative science and holistic healing come together. I am Sylvie Belgiensky and in each episode we explore nutrition, lifestyle, mental health and research-backed approaches to support the whole person through cancer and chronic diseases. Hello and welcome to this new episode of the Belgiansky Cancer Talk Show. Today, I am joined by Brian Dickerson, and I got the privilege to know him because his company, Flavent Relief, joined us last year at the Belgian Cancer Conference, which was hosted in Austin, Texas.
So we are very much looking to see his company this year in San Diego. And in the meantime, I have the pleasure to have this discussion with him. So Brian Dickerson is a healthcare lawyer with over 30 years in practice. He used this knowledge as a health care lawyer who presented company within the food and pharmaceutical industry to establish a natural health products manufacturing company with brands focusing on the use of flavonoids. His companies cultivate the plants, which are known to develop beneficial levels of flavonoids.
And then these flavanoids are extracted from the plant and utilized in dietary supplements and health care products to provide bioavailability, benefiting brain's health, overall wellness, and longevity support. He used his experience responding to traumatic brain injuries, especially from college football, to focus on health and wellness and specifically brain health. His companies manufacture and distribute products not only in the human wellness space, but also for dogs and horses in hopes of avoiding the side effects which are caused by pharmaceutical industry.
So Brian, welcome to the Belgiansky Cancer Talk Show. And I am very intrigued with your biography. First, how come a lawyer turned into a health advocate and health professional? I'm very, intrigued because that's also what happened to me. What is your story? Well, thank you. Thank you for having me on the show. The start was I represented pharmacies, healthcare practitioners, pharmaceutical companies, food companies and saw a lot of what comes about from those companies. And the dollar being the prime aspect of those company and not the beneficial health.
In 2014, I had two of my clients, at least the client contacts, step out and start doing their own business and it was in the nutraceutical space and was the natural space. And really sell the benefits of the national space, and so how the adversity we have to overcome in that space because we don't have the FDA approving a natural products and the pharmaceutical products get to make the claims. challenge, number one, but I also saw it was more beneficial to humans, the dogs and the horses. And as you mentioned in the intro, we rescue horses and see plenty of horses that have used the bantamine and Bute their whole life, which is the inset for horses, and their livers are done by the time they're 17 or 18. and I want to figure out a way to make them better.
and it was a natural plants, and then it progressed to adults, then to progress to the humans. In those plants your bio says you are specifically focusing on the flavonoids. Can you explain the audience what are flavanoids? Flavonoid are what protects the plants and they're going to be very vibrant colors. The pomegranate, you get the purples, the reds, Amomile, you get another purple that's protecting the flower, but all of those colors are derivative of
What Flavonoids Are and Why They Matter 4:20
the flavonoids. And then when you look at green, do you, look, at the bright green? parsley, rosemary, oregano. So the flavonoids are protecting those plants from ultraviolet rays, anything in the atmosphere that's gonna make a better cellular growth. And so what the flavonoid do for humans is the same thing. That's why we always proceed fruits and vegetables, and that why when you look at the blue zone areas from the Mediterranean to Japan, they eat the vegetables. They eat greens. they get the reds, the purples.
Here in America, our diet, as you know, from the last 30 years, have changed just to processed foods, and you're not getting those fruits and vegetables, so you not get the flavonoids. So the same thing with the flavonoids do for the plants. So, I mean, you hear that all the time nowadays. I eat the rainbow. That's the common thing that people are now advertising. Eat the rainbows, eat all those colors. But how do they actually benefit? By which mechanism of action does they benefit the body and help boost the immune system.
So when you look at, let's say quercetin, for example, which is common in the majority of plants, and I keep bringing up Ginkgo because of your family's history with using Gingko and green tea, the quersetin actually has like a barrier around the cell, so it protects any outside interference. If it's going to be viral, if it is going be bacterial, that querketin is protecting the cells. If there's something in the body that the bodies trying to protect, that quercetin is gonna be around the cell and help counterbalance the negative aspects in a body.
The quersetin has been found to be anti-parasitic with plants and in animals. And we know it is as humans as well, but that course to 10 with the parasite, going back to a 2023 study shows that it paralyzes the parasites. And so you've got that benefit. When you look at luteolin and epigenin, you're looking at flavonoids that help, they say, eat sugar. So they help reduce insulin levels. And, so when you'll look people that are becoming sick that need to have a stronger immune system, just those three flavanoids alone are helping the body have stronger cell growth, stronger cells themselves, and be able to fight off any outside interference.
When it comes to plants, people hear different things. Sometimes they are always beneficial, but we hear sometimes about antioxidant benefits, sometimes we speak about the alkaloids, which have shown to have anti-cancer properties. You are speaking of flavonoids. What is the difference between all those words and how people can sort out what really they mean and what they should focus on? Well, the alkaloids and the flavanoids work together a lot as far as antioxidants. Blueberries, for example, you're looking at the flavonoids and the antioxidants in blueberries that help people with the immune.
Edelberries same thing. But what are we looking? We're look at that dark purple, dark blue color. And that's where it has a lot of flavanoids. With the opioids, You're going to see that benefit of protecting the cells and protecting outside influence, whether it's a virus, bacteria, whatever it may be. So what I see most problematic we have here in the States is you're not eating the blueberries that were the natural non-GMO blueberries. You're eating that dill that is non heirloom dille. So if you are not even good plants and vegetables, not just stuff you get at the grocery store, but plants of vegetables that have not been GMO'd, you aren't going to have a lot of flavonoids in it and you won't have all the alcohol in there.
are able to get the organic product, then you're getting those flavonoids. But again, you can be getting a lot of greens, a And if you don't have the time in your diet, you need to somehow supplement that so it's in you body and helping your body. When you are facing cancer, You are suddenly facing a myriad of questions. Questions about nutrition, lifestyle, mental and emotional support. And how integrative approaches can work alongside conventional care. The Belgiansky Integrative Cancer Conference brings the conversation together in one place.
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Supplementation, Extraction, and Product Design 10:20
Yeah, and the soil is no longer, up to today, is not longer what the quality of the soils was several decades ago. I mean, it has been a slow but definitive erosion of quality soil and what soil was able to provide to the plants. So there is a need indeed for supplementation. How do you measure the need for that supplement? I mean, it's not like you can go to a doctor, have a simple test and they say, oh, you are deficient in vitamin D. how does it work to know you need to take flavonoids? Well, the way I look at it is from immunity to our brain health to the extra strength.
If I know I'm going to be on the road and I am not eating my fruits and vegetables or my food that I control, I know that it's not going to be the sustainable benefit of whether the flavonoids, the alkaloids or the nutrition. So it is very good when you're traveling to have this. If you are having a busy life at home and you can't get the good fruits and vegetables and a good diet, you suck on yourself. As far as how much, there's guidelines on flavanoids. But you got to remember, we're talking micrograms.
I mean, did the ability of a flavonoid is in the micro gram. So you're not needing 10, 15, 20 milligrams of each flavonoid. When you get them together, they work better. And that's what the key is with our process. We're planting heirloom plants, so they've not been heir loom seeds, and then they come out to be heir loin plants. As far as the soil comment you made before, it's all straight calvador. So it is really good soil. The seeds are able to cultivate well and then we harvest the plants at appropriate times and it all controlled indoor.
Temperature, lighting, and we extract the flavonoids from the plant. And when we're extracting them, we'll extract them together. So you're going to have quercetin, apigen, and luteolin all connected, bounded together like it's met in nature. Whereas when you see a lot of vitamins out there, they're just selling the quersitin, the beta-systerol, Apigen separately. And it is also a pill. So it's sort of a capsule. So, it goes down your digestive tract and your stomach acids, doing a little bit of destruction of that before your body gets absorbed.
What we've done is we pull the extracts, we mix it with MCT oil, because MCO has the best evidence as far as keeping the flavonoids vibrant and alive. And the other benefit of MCT oil on a tincture, you drop it in your tongue, it's going to cross the blood-brain barrier in about five to 10 minutes. So where are you cultivating your plants? Where is it coming from? And where is also this MCt oil coming? Well, we're growing them in Florida. Florida, so it is domestic. It's done here in the States.
It's all domestic as far as the plants, as well as where they're being grown. They're in our shipping containers that we have controlled environments. Very nice. And this MCT oil you were mentioning, able to cross the blood brain barrier. Can you tell me more about that? Yeah, the MCT oil is not nut oil. It is actually the heart of the palm. And so we're getting the best heart-of-the-palm oil, and that's the MCT oil that has the most absorption rate in the human cell. That is coming from Indonesia.
because that has the best source of palm oil for MCT. So what are the benefits of those flavonoids and those pills that people are taking, I believe, on a regular basis to see results? Everything takes consistency. The benefits that we're seeing is everything from inflammation control. And what I mean by that is everybody hears anti-inflammatory, anti inflammatory. Some part of inflammation is good for your body because it's letting you know where there may be a problem, but you also want to control inflammation.
And with the flavonoids from the canoflavins, the Canoflobin, and the Nerigenin, you're looking at flavanoids that can control the actual inflammation, so you have the proper level of information. Since those flavonoids are connected to the quercetin, the apigenin, and the rutin. Those flavanoids have given you the antioxidant benefits. The apagenin and rutine come from chamomile. So it's also giving you a nice calming effect, making you relax, helping you enjoy your life instead of always being stressed out.
And so putting all these flavonids together, they also have the evidence and research of being anti-parasitic and helping with insulin control. And so for an immunity system, whether it's be a body that's part of a autoimmune disorder or something like that, it is going to help in all facets. of the body's needs. So for people, I mean, who have different kinds of ailments, are you offering different kind of flavonoids? How do you sort the offer and how do understand who should take what? It's a good question.
So we've designed the different products for ailments, but more purposely to help the body organs that are dealing with those ailment. The immune system, the immunity product, it is designed to have the flavonoids that have higher antioxidant with anti-inflammatory processes. But it's going to be definitely hitting that antioxidate aspect. when you look at our brain health, that's gonna be helping more circulatory than using the neregenin, which has been shown in multiple studies to help with brain house.
Then you look at our extra strength and the extra strengths has more just higher anti-inflammatory process, pain relief to the pain receptors, and then secondarily, it's an antioxidant. And if you ask, how are we determining what dosage, It's a supplement. So it supposed to supplement your current diet. You're going to know better than we are what your issues are, if your eating properly, If you're not. But what we've done in the past is with like Dr. Carfeld at the Carfield Cancer Institute in Idaho, he's been working with us for two years and he has his protocol as far as what he recommends to his patients.
Benefits for Inflammation, Brain Health, and Pain 17:20
And we have other doctors that have their own protocol. We work with Front Row MD and their clinicians review our products and actually recommend what they believe is the best on our website. We worked with doctors to get that right tweak that it may be because everybody has a different issue with their body. Everybody has different nutritional value and diet. This helps with that as far as determining what is best. Very good. People need to take generally the product for how long to feel better, to fill the difference, feel less inflammation.
I assume, considering the fact that it is plants, it doesn't happen overnight. The results are more sustainable and have less side effects than with pharmaceutical products, but it also takes longer for the body to kick in to recognize the effect. So the benefits of having the flavonoids that have that COX-2 receptor aspect is you can feel it very clear. I can tell you from having CT from college football and having migraines all the time, getting a migraine, I could take either the brain health or the extra strength and in five to 10 minutes, the migrane's gone.
And I'm talking my migranes are normally take three or four, et cetera. It was drinking two cokes and I had the peripheral flashes. And from there, then I couldn't be anywhere where there's light for about three to four hours. Then I'd have this massive skull cap is what I call it. Just felt like your head's in pain and it'd be done for the whole day. So if in the situation where you're starting to get that my brain, when I take it, there is relief within 10 minutes. That's amazing. 10 Minutes, that's something amazing for something natural.
Yeah, we've got multiple testimonials from people with migraines that that's what they're doing. A gentleman named Billy Atwood in Weatherford, Texas, he's got his personal testimonial suffered from migraine too, and he uses the product and it's great results. But the thing is, even for other pain and immunity issues, because that has that receptor, COX-2 receptor and crosses the blood-brain barrier in five to 10 minutes, People will see results very quickly. And where we started this off with was the horses.
The horses don't have a placebo effect. They either feel good or they don' t feel. We could tell by using the product and the horse, seeing them being able to react and respond, how well it worked and how quickly it works. And then 2021, November, we had Dr. Donato-Barrillo. He conducted a clinical study using 65 patients, pain levels, acute, chronic from eight to 10. And they went on the extra strength back there. I would say that's like our alpha version, 300 ccs. So less than one milligram. And we had people reporting back that their pain levels went down to a four to five, and then after using it for two to three weeks, it was until one to two.
That was a peer review article that came back, that we ended up having 96% of those patients saying that they didn't have any pain like they did before. They felt the relief. But the funniest thing, was during the study, when it ended, we had, I think 10 or 15 patients said that they really didn't feel anything. And then 10 days later, they called the doctor and they're like, how do we get the product? Because they were like we didn' realize how it just eviscerated our pain and we were feeling good.
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Well, what I'll tell you, because we know how the FDA responds with cancer, is we're helping the body and we are helping body system fight anything that's interfering. And when it comes to sugar, we've got the data, the research showing how it reduces the sugar insulin. If you actually were to do this like in an in vitro on a slide, you will see the flavonoids around sugar corn fritos, it just eats it away, dissolves it. if you see this studies on the parasites. It really just paralyzes the parasite.
So it drops from the host and it just floats there. And then the binder, which is the MCT oil again, will help remove it. We've got videos and pictures, again tested on horses first, where we've gotten seven to 13 inch worms coming out of the fecal matter from a horse after we'd given them the flavolence. I know this isn't humans. No, absolutely. And you assume that all the worms are not going to like the flavonoids wherever they are located. I mean, it doesn't matter whether in the intestine of a horse, of humans, if they don't like flavanoids.
awesome way to detoxify the body without any side effect and complication. And it's an easy way do it. At the end of it, this detoxification process, I assume you feel better instead of feeling exhausted and having a need to slowly reenter into a normal diet.
Cancer Support, Horses, and Practical Use 24:20
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So we know a lot of people that have bad stomachs, bad issues, whether it be an inflammation, a bowel type aspect. With the Horse, it can kill a horse. A horse in colics is one of the biggest scares that anybody that owns a Horse has. And we have our horse product, the Equiflavin, same flavonoids as the immunity, that we now have an insurance company that will back us. So if you give your horse two doses of five cc's a week, and if that horse goes into collet and you get a 10 ccs of the product.
10 milliliters. And that horses needs surgery. We have a warranty that'll pay $10,000 towards that surgery, It's amazing how confident we are that if you use the product twice a week on your horse, thousand pound animal with a very sensitive stomach, you're not going to have that issue. And so that same benefit applies to the human stomach. Absolutely. That's why, I mean, The FDA requires that we do conduct studies on animals before testing on humans because similar results can be expected. Correct.
Absolutely. So how people can get their hands on those flavonoids and how to reach out to you? Well, our website is FlaventRelief.com. Can you spell it? How do you spells? And before the end of the podcast, we'll broaden out the backdrop and there's a QR code there that people can use that QR to be able to get to the website. But out of your family and everything you guys have done for cancer and pushing natural health, we'll have a code as well. And anybody using that code, Janssy code you're going to get 35% off your order just so we can get everybody getting that natural product and that benefit.
Thank you, thank you very much. I'm sure that the audience will highly appreciate that. And I do believe that those natural products having no side effects are also able to work very well in synergy with everything that we are doing with the Belgiansky products. Everything I hear from you about sustaining naturally the body and helping the bodies to fight inflammation, cancer cells, and so on, is really similar to the approach that we are doing also with natural products. I mean, we're working with a natural product which we cannot grow, unfortunately, here in the US.
Our plant extracts we work with are coming from the Amazon or from Africa. All those plants are working in the same intelligent way to support the body to provide you with what nature is intended to give you and doesn't have the toxicity associated with medicine. That's why it's not medicine, it is nature and the benefits of nature. Yeah, it's true nature's health. Yeah. Exactly. Which was there long before pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals appeared at the 18th century. I mean, the chemicals, for centuries and centuries, all medicine was natural and based on plants.
Mostly. There's always other conversations with people who are like, well, there's no way a plant can do that. You need to have pharmaceutical. You need to have that involvement. And I will say at one point in time, representing the healthcare companies, pharmaceutical companies food companies had that perception as well. But once you see the side effects and the surmounting effect of those side-effects, and then you'll see how the natural plants work. I know kind of for me, you go back and see all your grandfather's ate and how your grandfathers talk about their father's eating and my grandfather has both lived to their nineties.
So they didn't do too bad. Yeah, absolutely. And now you see that there are more and more cancers. People are getting sick younger and younger, and you have to, I mean, what they are doing, which is not sustaining their health. Why do they get sick in the first place? You look at that, a lot of them are just eating the processed food that's being thrown on commercials and social media pop on there. It's all about processed foods and unfortunately, they probably haven't been educated on what they should be.
Absolutely. And it's not available. Well, you make it available through, I mean, it's really complementing the food to provide the body what the buddy needs. And I love this approach and I think everybody should learn about quality supplements to supplement your food and provide your buddy what it needs to sustain itself and stay healthy. And one of the things that we have in common with Bojansky is before we had been new about your great organization, when we look at us using the Ginkgo plant, growing the Grinko plant extracting the green tea that the same use that, we get the benefit of epic actions and the research on the epic catchings and how they can help rebuild cells in the body.
There's, there's that great synergy. She's showing you've been doing it for years and we're finding the resource of these plants or we can get this specific plants to help further that. Very good. Excellent. Well, we look forward to seeing Flavent at the Belzhansky Conference in San Diego this June. It's going to be a treat, and I am sure that the audience will highly appreciate seeing you and seeing your products over there. We can't wait to see them. I hope everybody can go there and get their opportunity to go.
Thank you. Thank
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